
After the Lezha court issued a decision to sentence Ruben Saraiva to life imprisonment, the first comment comes from Ardian Nikulaj's family.
Exclusively for Top Channel journalist Muhamed Veliu, the family of the businessman killed in the bar of his hotel in Shëngjin declares that they had been waiting for this decision for a long time and see it as a step forward in getting justice for Ardian.
"The barbarity of Ardian's execution with six bullets by the Albanian justice convict Ruben Saraiva today is a wound that will never heal, especially for Ardian's children who are growing up without the warmth of their father.
"Despite today's decision for Ruben Saraiva, we continue to be hurt by the fact that Ardiani treated all the British people who came to his hotel as friends, but in fact they had come with the intention of surveilling him and then having him killed by their associate Ruben Saraiva," the family says.
The family of Ardian Nikulaj expresses concern that the British who came with a mission to observe their relative and pass the information on to the executioner have not yet been brought to justice in Albania.
"We are grateful to the Lezha police officers who investigated the murder, to the Interpol office in Tirana who did everything for the extradition of Ruben Saraiva from Morocco, including the prosecutors in the case to bring Ruben Saraiva to justice, but we are concerned by the delay in the extradition of the five arrested in England since 2023, as involved in Ardian's murder.
"At the same time, there will be no full justice for Ardian and no peace for the Nikulaj family unless the orderers and financiers of the murder are discovered and brought to justice," they said.
So far, the investigations of Lezha prosecutors have raised a lead on who the orderers and financiers of Ardian Nikulaj's murder may be, but they have not yet been able to prove it through evidence.